Thought of the Day - Blogging Lesson Ideas

Ok, here is my thought of the day. After reading a few chapters in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classrooms by Will Richardson and by examining the discussions of Dr. Thornburg in a recent class video, I have a couple ideas that involve using blogs in my fifth grade classroom. Feel free to comment, criticize, or use any of these ideas in your classroom. The first was the use of a weblog that I utilized for the past two years, but didn't even know that I was blogging, and according to Will Richardson, it isn't true blogging. To keep all my students and parents abreast of homework, due dates, field trips, etc, I utilized a website titled www.schoolnotes.com. I updated this site daily and it proved to be immensely helpful for the students who were absent or for the parents who's children tend to forget to write down their due dates in their assignment book. This also alleviated the "I didn't know it was due" excuse that drives many teachers up the wall.

Now lets talk about the future. Next year, I plan on utilizing a class blog to aid with my literature circles. My school is lucky enough to have a mobile computer lab with over 25 laptops available for my fifth grade class (by the way, only the fifth grade is allowed to use this particular set of laptops). As we get into more complex novels like Stowaway by Karen Hesse and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O'Brien, we conduct our small groups with a lot of discussion on character development. I think a fantastic use of a blog would be to have each group select one character and contribute a thought to the characters development after reading each chapter. By the end of the story, it will be a complete narration of the development of that particular character written by my students. Although the authors of many of the stories we read in class are either deceased or probably have much better things to do, since these blogs can reach a "global audience" it would be amazing to get feedback from the actual author's one day. Much like Will Richardson mentioned in his book.

To go along with the global audience idea, I feel the idea of having a child become an author to a global audience will really motivate the students who struggle with writing motivation. I was thinking of a weekly creative writing prompt to place on a weblog to have students respond to each week. This will hopefully motivate the students who aren't interested in simply writing for a class audience, or even a more introverted student who is afraid to share his writing in front of a class of peers. Having my students write a more global audience will also have them analyze their writing a little more and make them a little more motivated to proofread each assignment before submitting it. Like I said, feel free to comment, criticize, or use these ideas. These are my thoughts.